Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Remembrance of Things Past

I have been in email correspondence with a student at Kenyon College in Ohio for the last couple of weeks. The student contacted me because I had blogged about my Camino walk and she was doing a paper on the subject. She wanted me to answer some questions about my experience and I gladly did so. This morning I received an email from her thanking me for taking the time to answer her questions. While going though the rest of my emails, I also went into my saved file and had a email I had saved in 2007 pop up first thing. This one was from a woman who was just getting ready to do the Camino and wrote to ask me how walking the Camino had affected my life. I wrote back the following:

How did walking the Camino affect my life? I haven't really thought about this and can only say ,at this point in time, walking the Camino has helped me to feel more comfortable with who I am and it has opened my heart and soul to what the universe has to offer.

As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy'. The Camino showed me that this statement is true.How could I not be affected by what happened to me on my walk?

It definitely changed me. I did not feel any different when I got home but my family said I had changed. It was a spiritual experience and it helped me see my mother's death as another spiritual experience. I was there when she died and I now know that my being there was a blessing.

But has it changed my life in any major ways? No, I pretty much live the same life I lived before the Camino. The only difference is I am more at peace with myself than I was before the walk.

I had forgotten I had written this but the words are still true. I am certainly more as peace now that I was before I did the walk- just not as at peace as I was when I first wrote those words. A reminder that I need to work on that?

5 comments:

Rain said...

That's an interesting thing to question-- is it really good to be at peace for more than at times? Maybe it's the reward for change or events where we have moved ahead in our lives but it was stress ahead of those events or changes that pushed us to get there. So it's a cycle of moments of peace and moments of stress all effectively part of a full living of life.

Blue Witch said...

Yes, I suspect that 2007 email popped out for a reason...

I think that the pace of life, even in more rural areas, is such that it is impossible (perhaps even undesirable) to be at peace continually.  Sometimes it takes a time of reflection, or a distance from the rat-race to remember what is truly important.

la peregrina said...

Good points, ladies.  I now understand I have confused feeling at peace with feeling emotionally centered.  The last few months have been stressful and I am so far from emotionally centered right now it amplifies the feeling of being under too much pressure.  New goal- get emotional centered so I can handle stress better.

Kay Dennison said...

I found this post fascinating -- and the responses, too!  I need to get back to a more spiritual life as well in better touch with my emotions so I guess that I'm a basket case and my therapy is failing.  Sigh.

la pergrina said...

Just remember to stop and breathe deeply once in awhile, Kay, it really helps.